Safe use of oxy-acetylene welding and cutting equipment

If oxy-acetylene welding and cutting equipment is used incorrectly, this could lead to accidents and fires resulting in serious personal injuries.

Managing the risks

To help you to identify the hazards associated with using oxy-acetylene welding and cutting equipment and the appropriate ways of controlling them, use our example Risk Assessment - Safe Use of Oxy-acetylene Welding and Cutting Equipment. It covers the generic hazards associated with this type of activity and suggests control measures to reduce risks to an acceptable level. You should ensure that your document only addresses “significant” hazards, i.e. any that could, and more importantly are likely to cause an accident or injury.

Make your instructions clear

Don’t include activities in your document that simply don’t need to be there. Work to the principle that if there is any chance of your staff being unaware of the safe way of doing something, then you will need to make it clear in your document. Finally, always ensure that any control measures you identify and follow are decided upon the principle of “so far as is reasonably practicable”.

Note. The list of potential hazards is not exhaustive and each place of use will be different. However, for your risk assessment to be considered suitable and sufficient in the eyes of the law it must accurately reflect the “significant” hazards found when using oxy-acetylene welding and cutting equipment in your workplace.